Life, Not College, Is What Makes You Fat

Today in news you can use to remind yourself that you're not in college anymore (unless you are, in which case, hooray!), MSNBC reports that the cursed, vile freshman 15 is actually not true, at least, so says a new study, which found that most college students don't actually gain 15 pounds in their first year at school. More accurate would be a freshman 3, but what happened to the old college try?

"The 'freshman 15' is a myth," said Ohio State research scientist Jay Zagorsky, co-author of the study that is believed to be the first nationwide look at the purported phenomenon. "There is no 'freshman 15.'"

All along, it seems, we have been tricked by college weight fearmongerers, stemming from the first use of the phrase "freshman 15," which Zagorsky dug up in a 1989 magazine article. The limit does not exist!

Still, 15 is divisible by 3, which is something we learned before college. And according to the study, regarding freshman year weight gain,

For women, the average weight gain was 3.1 pounds; for men it was 3.5 pounds.

In all four years of college, women gained almost 9 pounds, and men gained 13.4, on average, though a quarter of freshman actually lost weight.

Things that did make people gain weight were heavy drinking, eating a bunch of crap, working, and, actually, "becoming a young adult." So, basically, college won't make you fat, but life will. The Life 15. Fear it, we are all susceptible!